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Developers Diary: August - 2015

Boots - A new scenario﻿

You may have been wondering what has been happening since our conclusion of the Ilkeston development of the route in July. Well, to be honest there have been another couple of weeks holiday in there sunning ourselves abroad but I have also been hard at work revisiting an old ghost in the cupboard that would not lay to rest.Dave and I had decided that we should give our development activities a rest and seek some entertainment in adding to the current 6 scenarios contained within the route. Dave was keen to get his hands on utilising the new lines north up to Bennerley and Ilkeston Junction, and has therefore started to develop a scenario that would utilise our new found facilities on the Erewash Line. For me, I wanted to give myself another go at a challenge that I challenged myself with originally a year ago.Train simulator 2015 will let you program AI (Artificial Intelligent) Trains that are controlled by the computer in your scenarios. These provide a way to make your adventure more realistic with computer controlled trains occupying your scenario and sometimes hindering your progress.AI trains however are notoriously stupid and are very limited in what they do and how you interact with them. It can very easily end up with a derailment or indeed making your scenario unplayable or freeze.

In all the scenario's I have played, whether they be on the standard commercial routes or add-ons, I have never come across a scenario that allows you to work collaboratively with other AI trains. They always have had the purpose of hindering your progress or provide an oncoming train to busy your scenes

I wanted to create a scenario that emulated a coordinated operation between a player and AI trains that worked together to achieve a goal. Typically this would involve an AI train bringing a rake of wagons into an entry siding, dropping them off and then go to an exit siding to pick up a loaded rake of wagons and take them off to the mainline. Meanwhile the player picks up the original rake and pulls them into a compound to be loaded and then deposited back into the exit siding. The cycle would begin again.

Simple enough you would have thought!

To get AI Coupling or Uncoupling to work in Train Simulator you will need to understand AI restrictions. This list is by no means exhaustive!

It will not work if the stock has been previously hauled by a AI or a Player selected train.

You also have to fully set up a pick up order including the coaches or wagons that will be involved

You cannot use any way point commands to get an AI train to its uncouple destination

You can not decouple stock that has previously been coupled to AI services

The player train will always take priority over AI operations

Getting AI trains to disappear down portals after they have completed their function is an effective way of getting them out of harms way. This however tends to freeze semaphore signals and can freeze subsequent trains planning to use the same line

Despite numerous attempts on test scenarios for what seemed like months, success has evaded me so far. Lets see what September brings?